A task group of Subcommittee D13.21, Pile Floor Coverings, seeks participation from all stakeholders as it finalizes a draft Standard Practice for Operation of a Roller Chair Tester for Secondary Backed Pile Yarn Floor. Stakeholders may comment on the draft, which will be reviewed and balloted by members of the subcommittee which operates in ASTM Committee D13 on Textiles. Nina M. Clarke, Technical and Flooring Division, DuPont Canada, Inc., Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is subcommittee chairman. Technical service specialist David Wilkinson, Emulsion Polymers Carpet Group, The Dow Chemical Company, Dalton, Ga., explains why the proposed standard practice supports carpet quality. This equipment allows the user to perform a durability test of carpet (pile yarn floor covering) under conditions that simulate the wear of a 200 lb. person in a rotating castor chair, says Wilkinson. In many offices where carpet has been installed, the first signs of delamination of the secondary backing occurs at the desks under the rolling chairs. This type of roller-chair tester has been used for many years to help the carpet industry develop better carpet backing systems that will be more durable to heavy roller wear. There have been several types of equipment designs, and this practice references the design that has proven to be most reliable and efficient.

The subcommittee initiated the new standard because most carpet testing is performed on the newly-manufactured product, says Wilkinson, the ASTM task group chairman. There are three other practices for equipment that are used to test the durability of carpet (Vetterman Drum, Hexapod Tester, and the Tetrapod Tester), he notes. This practice [will] offer the carpet manufacturers another option for measuring durability based on a different type of fatiguing mechanism (rotating and twisting wheels versus pounding bumpers).

According to Wilkinson, users of the standard will gain a protocol for using the roller-chair tester for carpet testing. From this practice, the user can develop standards of performance, he says. It can be used to assess the performance of the yarn, construction, secondary backing, or underlayment cushion. We hope that some users will specify a certain performance of a carpet system based on the use of this practice. For instance that the carpet, when testing according to the practice using a specified underlayment cushion, will withstand 10,000 cycles on the test equipment without evidence of delamination of the secondary backing.